The Day of Pentecost: Acts 2: 1-21
May 24, 2026
At Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church
Michael Mitchell, Lay Assistant
“and Jesus said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24: 46-49, nrsv).
Father Carey noted last week when preaching from that passage that the disciples and followers did not know how long it would be before this happened and they did not know exactly what would happen.
Today, we learn that they did as Jesus asked; they stayed in Jerusalem. And as it turned out, it was just over a week when it happened. The Holy Spirit came on them while gathered together in a room. Luke describes the event as a violent wind that blew through the room on them, and tongues like fire rested on all of them, and they were filled with God’s Holy Spirit. The word used for “wind” in Greek is “pneuma” which translates as both “wind and spirit,” just as the Hebrew word for spirit used in the creation stories “ruakh” means both “wind and spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the Breath of God coming on us.1 As Jesus was empowered by the Holy Spirit, now his disciples and followers are filled with the Holy Spirit. The first gift the Spirit gave them was ability to communicate in languages they did not know which they used to communicate with residents of Jerusalem. This was not the “Glossolalia” or “speaking in tongues” which the early church often experienced as a gift of the Spirit. On this day, the gift was for communicating with people from many languages and cultures.2 These Jews from all over the Roman Empire and even beyond the Empire who had settled in Jerusalem knew Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic in order to conduct business and live in the city. But this day, God reached out to people in their native tongues, so they heard the words of “home.”3 God was inviting people to become citizens of the Kingdom of God as their true selves through Jesus’ call to repentance and receiving forgiveness and reconnection with their Creator. All people, for as Peter spoke to the crowd who was made up of people from everywhere in the known world, he quoted Joel who says God will pour out His Spirit on Young and Old, Men and Women, Slaves and Free, every category of humans of the day. The Holy Spirit made it clear that God intends to tell the Good News He told in Jesus’ life and teachings, and his death and resurrection, to everyone all over the Earth. That’s why Luke lists where everyone is from in the crowd that day. God is speaking to everyone everywhere and to every category of human in their home town language.
The disciples thought the Gospel was for Jews as fulfilment of God’s promises to the Jews. But shortly, Paul and Peter will discover God intends their work to be for the whole of humanity, and it becomes a whole new faith community centered in Jesus.
What does the Holy Spirit do in people? The Spirit gave the disciples and early followers power as courage and confidence, Spiritual Power. The Holy Spirit filled them and fills us with this power. And the Spirit transforms us just as the earliest followers were transformed. This is the sin and forgiveness thing. Sin is our behavior and thinking that breaks and destroys relationships, and it clouds our vision so we can’t clearly experience God’s love and presence with us. The Spirit teaches us about God’s forgiveness which clears our vision and restores our ability to experience being loved by God, and restores our ability to love ourselves and each other.
The Holy Spirit is transformative, creating in us the “Fruits of the Spirit.” If you look at our Bulletin today, a list of Gifts of the Spirit is there on page 11. This comes from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (5:22-23). These are the character traits we develop as we are transformed by the Holy Spirit. We develop Love, Peace, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Self-Control, Joy, Patience, Goodness, and Gentleness (that’s Paul’s list).
Now I know, these are the traits our family and friends see in us and that we see in the mirror when we look at ourselves, right? I asked my siblings once how they would describe me when we were growing up. The words they used were bossy and opinionated to describe me. I never asked them how they would describe me now. I might not be able to take it. How do your family and friends describe you?
Well, fortunately, the Holy Spirit’s work in us brings forgiveness, reconciliation, and love, reconnecting us to our Creator and to each other, and to people needing love and forgiveness outside our churches. The Spirit is at work weaving those traits listed as Fruits of the Spirit into each of us, one day at a time. In another letter of Paul’s, I Corinthians 13, Paul says of all the Gifts of the Spirit, one stands out as most important: LOVE. That makes it possible for us to be close to God, and it makes it possible for us to have good caring relationships, and it moves us to care for people in our church and for our hearts to be moved to help people outside our church. Paul says the gift of the Holy Spirit that is most important is LOVE. And that’s why we say at Saint Luke’s “it really is all about love.” Let the Holy Spirit do its work in you.
1 Barbara Reid in “The Acts of the Apostles.” The New Interpreter’s Study Bible notes, p. 1958.
2 Reid, Interpreter’s Study Bible, p. 1958
3 Reid, Interpreter’s, p.1958